Actress June Lockhart, whose long career began in Hollywood’s Golden Age with such films as “A Christmas Carol” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” and went on to include television roles as the mother on “Lassie” and “Lost in Space,” has died at the age of 100, it was announced today.
Lockhart died Thursday in Santa Monica of natural causes with her daughter June Elizabeth and granddaughter Christianna by her side, according to her publicist.
Born in New York, Lockhart made her stage debut at 8 years old in the 1933 production of “Peter Ibbetson” at the Metropolitan Opera House. She began acting in films at age 13 MGM’s 1938 version of the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol,” which starred her parents Gene and Kathleen Lockhart.
Her next film was “All This and Heaven Too” playing alongside Bette Davis and Charles Boyer. Other notable films included 1941’s “Sergeant York” and the classic 1944 musical “Meet Me in St. Louis,” starring Judy Garland and directed by Vicente Minnelli.
In the midst of her burgeoning Hollywood career, Lockhart won a Tony Award as best newcomer for her 1947 Broadway debut in “For Love or Money.”
Lockhart gained new fame with TV audiences as the gentle, soft-voiced mother in “Lassie,” as space mom Maureen Robinson in “Lost in Space,” and as Dr. Janet Craig in “Petticoat Junction.”
In later years, she appeared in numerous episodic series and contributed her voice to her favorite animated series, “Ren & Stimpy” for Nickelodeon.
Lockhart was also a great admirer of the U.S. space program and became a NASA spokesperson, attending many launches and landings throughout the decades, including side-by-side with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at NASA’s milestone 40th Anniversary of the Moon landing celebration in Washington, D.C., in 2009.
“Mommy always considered acting as her craft, her vocation, but her true passions were journalism, politics, science and NASA,” her daughter June Elizabeth said. “She cherished playing her role in ‘Lost in Space’ and she was delighted to know that she inspired many future astronauts, as they would remind her on visits to NASA. That meant even more to her than the hundreds of television and movies roles she played.”
NASA honored Lockhart’s impact on space exploration by awarding her the Exceptional Public Achievement Medal in a 2013 ceremony at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The award is given to non-government individuals who have made significant public contributions to NASA throughout their career.
Lockhart was also a tireless defender of animal rights, supporting the Santa Monica Mounted Police Horses among other groups, and was the national spokesperson for International Hearing Dog Inc.
“Thomas Edison in the early 1920s hired and introduced two young actors to one another, Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Arthur,” Lockhart’s longtime family friend Lyle Gregory said. “They performed sketches written by Edison to promote his latest invention, the phonograph, for eager audiences across the emerging modern North American landscape. Those two young actors fell in love, married, had one child and named her June.”
Gene Lockhart, June’s father, a prolific, Oscar-nominated character actor with more than 300 film credits, was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1930s. Influenced by his work with the union, June got involved with the American Federation of Radio Artists (later AFTRA) and The Screen Actors Guild, and was awarded The Founders Award in 2018.
Service will be private.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to The Actors Fund (entertainmentcommunity.org), ProPublica (propublica.org) or International Hearing Dog Inc. (hearingdog.org).